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Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees

Trump's Intel Advisers Back Him, Say Several Key Iranian Nuclear Facilities were Destroyed; White House to Limit Classified Information Shared with Congress, Interview with Rep. Seth Moulton (D- MA); President Trump Says U.S. Will Meet Iran Next Week; Donald Trump Accuses Media of Demeaning Iran Mission Pilots; Trump Maintains U.S. Strikes Destroyed Iran Nuclear Program; President Trump's Intel Advisers Back Him, Say Several Key Iranian Nuclear Facilities Were Destroyed. Aired 8-9p ET

Aired June 25, 2025 - 20:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GLORIA PAZMINO, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): ...Democratic parties struggling with how to run candidates in the age of Trump.

REP. HAKEEM JEFFRIES (D-NY): What's clear is that the relentless focus on affordability had great appeal.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PAZMINO: Erin, the next phase of this campaign will kick off tomorrow. Mayor Eric Adams is expected to launch his reelection bid on the steps of City Hall, and the question is going to be whether he can summon the same ground game or better than Mamdani did in this election and whether New Yorkers will be willing to give him a second chance after four years of scandals and an embrace of the Republican Party -- Erin.

ERIN BURNETT, CNN HOST: Gloria, thank you so much, appreciate that. And thanks so much to all of you for joining us AC360 begins now.

[20:00:53]

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST, "ANDERSON COOPER: 360": Good evening again from Tel Aviv. Just moments ago, the President landed back home after a one day NATO Summit in the Netherlands. Many questions, of course, remain about what exactly has occurred over the last several days. We are many days into a story that, frankly, did not have to be a story at all. Namely, his saying that American airstrikes obliterated three Iranian nuclear facilities before the aircraft involved had even returned to base, and long before anyone could officially and categorically determine the true damage that was done.

Now, the alternative would have been to say something along the lines of what the Joint Chiefs Chairman, Dan Caine, said Sunday morning. He said, and I'm quoting him now. He said, "I think BDA," meaning a Bomb Damage Assessment or Battlefield Damage Assessment, continuing the quote, "... is still pending and it would be way too early for me to comment on what may or may not still be there." Now, he chose not to say that, then the President did. He then began

equating the reporting, including CNN's on that question was somehow disrespecting the men and women who successfully carried the strikes, something which is not in doubt at all in any way. Late today, from aboard Air Force One, the President went on social media, here's what he said.

He announced that the Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, would be holding a "major news conference" tomorrow morning at 8:00 A.M. Eastern at the Pentagon in order to fight for the dignity of our great American pilots, these patriots, he writes, were very upset. He closed by saying that the press conference would be, in his words, and I quote, "both interesting and irrefutable," adding, "enjoy."

As we said, though, this notion of defending service members, even though no one is attacking them, is now the standard line for him. Here he is at the summit this morning, talking to NBC's Kelly O'Donnell.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: They put their lives on the line, and then they have -- and I'm not referring to you, but real scum, real scum come out and write reports that are as negative as they could possibly be. It should be the opposite. You should make them heroes and heroines. You should make them really people that -- they were so devastated when they heard this news.

And you know what they said? One of them -- I spoke to one of them said, Sir, we hit the site. It was perfect. It was dead on.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: Well, it certainly seems to have been dead on, by all indications the men and women who carried out these strikes delivered their bombs and their warheads on target with no mishaps or casualties before returning home. It was a remarkable and bold mission, that's never been in question.

The question, and it is being studied by multiple members of the U.S. intelligence community and other countries' intelligence communities as well, is what those massive bombs which had never been used in combat in this way before, and those warheads did when they hit those targets.

Also, the question is -- the where the whereabouts of the highly enriched uranium. That's what this is about, not the skill and bravery of American fighting men and women, or the tactical success of their mission, especially in the wake of yesterdays leaked details from a very preliminary Defense Intelligence Agency Assessment suggesting the damage may not have been as complete as immediately presented.

To that point, late today, CIA Director John Ratcliffe had this to say, and I'm quoting from his statement, "CIA can confirm that a body of credible intelligence indicates Iran's nuclear program has been severely damaged by the recent targeted strikes. This includes new intelligence from a historically reliable and accurate source/method that several key Iranian nuclear facilities were destroyed and would have to be rebuilt over the course of years." He goes on to say, "CIA continues to collect additional reliably sourced information to keep appropriate decision makers and oversight bodies fully informed."

Now, he did not, we should note, name the three sites which were hit though. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard did, and Ratcliffe said nothing about the whereabouts of the fissile material, which is a very important question to have answered. In any case, his statement may fall on skeptical ears. Here's the Democratic Vice Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee earlier today, when asked about the President's recent statements on the subject.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. MARK WARNER (D-VA): You destroy trust with your friends and also with your foes. If people are misrepresenting or lying about the effects of this attack, who's going to trust us going forward?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[20:05:29]

COOPER: Well, he and his fellow senators will be briefed by the administration on the strikes tomorrow. The briefing that was to take place earlier was canceled without explanation, and they were very critical of that. The House briefing will also be on Friday. And in a related note, CNN has learned that the White House will limit more broadly its sharing of classified information on a system of informing Congress called Cap-Net. That report, leaked by the D.A., was apparently disseminated on Cap-Net.

So we're going to hear more from the defense secretary tomorrow morning and plenty tonight, including a closer look at how bunker buster bombs work. And in a moment, well talk with the former senior operations manager of the CIA and get his take on this controversy. But first, I want to bring in CNN's Kaitlan Collins, who is in the Netherlands right now -- Kaitlan

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR AND CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Anderson, I mean, this whole subject has dominated the day here at the NATO Summit with the President answering questions about it. The first time he was in front of reporters. And for a vast length of that press conference that we had here this afternoon. And, of course, in this, what we were seeing the administration do, Anderson, is not deny the existence of this report or even the contents in it, but instead seeking to downplay it and highlight other parts of it that were included, including one assessment where it said that there was moderate to severe damage.

That is a phrase that both the President and the Defense Secretary both repeated today, though they leaned towards the end that said severe damage there. Of course, the report said, both as they are still waiting on further analysis from what is just a preliminary report. And so, this is a question that we asked the White House earlier and

asked the President himself about when it comes to what intelligence he's relying upon, because as they were trying to bolster their argument, Anderson, and downplay this report from the Defense Intelligence Agency, which for people who don't know, is the intelligence arm of the Pentagon. The director of it is actually the principal intelligence adviser to the Defense Secretary himself.

The White House was circulating an intelligence report released by the Israeli Atomic Agency. That is something that's pretty unusual to see the United States government circulating a report that came from the Israeli side before it had even been released by the Israeli side. And so, I asked President Trump about which intelligence he's relying upon for his assessment that these sites were obliterated and this is what he told me.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

COLLINS: You just cited Israeli intelligence on these attacks. Earlier, you said U.S. intelligence was inconclusive. Are you relying on Israeli intelligence for your assessment of the impact of the strikes?

TRUMP: No, this is also Iran made the statement and it's also, if you read the document that was given that he can talk about, if you'd like, the document said it could be very severe damage, but they didn't take that. They said it could be limited or it could be very severe. They really didn't know.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COLLINS: Now, since that press conference happened, where the President also said he believes that the enriched uranium that we know Iran was working on and building up was in the facilities when it was struck by the United States bombs on Saturday night, something that also contradicts what this early assessment finds, Anderson.

We've now seen statements come out from the CIA director, from the director of the National Intelligence, seeking to bolster what the President has been arguing here. But even still, when you look at those assessments, they have different wordings when it comes to just how badly damaged these sites were. And that is really what's at the heart of this, because no one is denying, obviously, that these B-2 bombers hit their targets. And obviously you can see that in the technology and in the Maxar satellite images of the before and after of these sites.

The question is whether or not it completely obliterated them as the President said immediately after these attacks happened on Saturday night. And so obviously, that's the question here going forward and you're going to see the Defense Secretary coming out tomorrow answering more of these questions from reporters.

COOPER: All right, Kaitlan Collins, thanks very much. We'll see you at nine o'clock in light of the controversy, not to mention the CIA director's statement late today. I want to drill deeper on this. I'm joined by Norman Roule, a former senior operations manager with the CIA who also previously served as U.S. National Intelligence manager for Iran in the office of the director of National Intelligence. He's now a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Norman, thanks for being with us. This initial intelligence assessment from the DIA, which was leaked, was, as we reported, very preliminary. No doubt more assessments using other methods, other sources and deeper analysis are being done as Kaitlan mentioned, Israel has put out one saying Iran's nuclear program suffered systemic damage. What kinds of data would you need in order to get as full a picture as possible of what kind of damage was done to these nuclear sites?

[20:10:14]

NORMAN ROULE, FORMER SENIOR OPERATIONS MANAGER WITH THE CIA: Well, good evening, and I hope you'll allow me to begin by saying that I have to condemn the leak of classified information because that does threaten sources and methods and undermines the trust we have with allies who share information with us. I think you also have to understand that initial reports are often based on the initial information received by analysts at the time, and this was very early on, after the attacks were being reviewed.

So, the analysts at the time may not have even known, the extent to which the Israelis and the United States had conducted all of their attacks and keep in mind, we're talking about attacks at multiple sites. So, what does that mean?

So, if you look at a site and you say moderate to severe damage, well, if the Iraq plutonium facility, it appears that the Israelis have destroyed the reactor. But based upon imagery, I understand that the heavy water facility next door has moderate damage. So, you could have in a sentence the phrase moderate to severe damage, but your final assessment for the site would be that reactor is finished, it's not going to be making a plutonium weapon in the near future, but again, this is early stages.

So what you'd want to do is over the days, you'd want to collect based on the traditional chain -- human intelligence, signal intelligence, the very specialized geospatial intelligence -- you'd want liaison reporting to see what they're getting from their sources and then you would have very specialized analysts who would be able to interpret this. People with nuclear background, people with very special technical and military backgrounds to understand what is happening underground, places where you wouldn't be able to necessarily see based upon the data itself and then pull that together as a picture.

I am confident that Iran has suffered a catastrophic, catastrophic blow to its enrichment program, its conversion to metal program, and that this has set them back for a very, very long time. But we'll know more about this as this data comes through.

COOPER: You have no doubt about what's happened to the nuclear facilities and the capabilities. I mean, you're saying this is a setback, you believe of years? ROULE: Well, let me give you an example. Fordow, it took them years to

put together and the weaponry we used against Fordow was something the United States military has practiced for over a decade with specialized capacity, and obviously intelligence work that was designed to work on that specific facility. We can also say that above ground of buildings and support structures throughout their enterprise has been destroyed.

The centrifuge facility, with 1,700 centrifuges at Natanz has been destroyed. It had advanced centrifuges. The power facility at Natanz has been destroyed. And when you turn off a power facility very suddenly, it does very bad things to centrifuges below. So there are thousands of centrifuges below Natanz, which likely suffered damage and there may even be contamination in those chambers.

Now, we're not going to know that until someone goes into that area and that may not have happened yet. And by the way, even for the Iranians themselves, they're in the fog of war, and they may not have been able to determine exactly what is happening in their environment, but we can say the metal conversion facility at Esfahan appears to have been destroyed.

Well, that means if the Iranians wish to make metal to for a nuclear weapon, they're going to have to build a new conversion facility. There may be stored centrifuges that they had not put into facilities, the centrifuge parts. Well, we've got to find those. There may be 3.6 percent enriched uranium, 20 percent enriched uranium, 60 percent enriched uranium, outside of those facilities and that could be part of the story line of enriched uranium that is outside of the control that we've got to find.

I also would note that we're not talking about where that is located. Well, that's protection of sources and methods and we may be trying to collect a story line to develop that for future work, which could be diplomatic work to pass that to the IAEA so that they can place those facilities under their supervision and control.

COOPER: Just one last question, the President has said he believes the enriched uranium was not moved. Unclear how he would know that, how he knows that. Is that something that would be known right now, or is that something that is going to have to be learned down the road, maybe even through IAEA inspectors or negotiations with Iran?

[20:15:06]

ROULE: Well, let me give you a couple of scenarios. Several days prior to what was probably the most important military attack conducted by the United States in 30 years, I think it's probably likely we watched that facility very closely. And according to public reports, there were dozens of trucks that came to that facility. What if they were bringing material to store in the facility because they thought it was a safe place to put material because they thought it couldn't be harmed?

I mean, you've got a variety of different ways you can look at something, but you need to collect information after the event to see how this plays out. Now, if those trucks were carrying items away, again, we were watching the facility, I believe, very closely and likely understand where those trucks have been.

I don't know that, but I have confidence in my former colleagues and their exquisite capabilities. I would be surprised if that's not the case. But again, we wouldn't want to publicize that, and I hope they don't publicize that because it wouldn't -- it wouldn't necessarily be a good thing to reveal sources and methods until there's a policy decision associated with that.

COOPER: How long do you think it will be -- you see a role for, whether it's the IAEA -- I mean, in order to get a full whatever -- a deal with Iran, what do you think has to happen next? The IAEA would seem or somebody would seem to need access to these sites ultimately down the road, if there is ever to be I mean -- if a continued peace, no?

ROULE: Absolutely, in fact, the next step needs to be the International Atomic Energy Agency needs to be given not only an inventory of what Iran has retained in terms of nuclear material to include centrifuge parts and centrifuges, so that we know that they're not building a covert facility, right, and the IAEA needs to place that under observation.

I think Iran will be reluctant to provide that. Indeed, their parliament has authorized the government to cease cooperation with the IAEA, and the Iranians will probably use that as a card in negotiation. Now, the administration, in their talks with the Iranians, are going to try to basically convince the Iranians to give up some aspect of enrichment that would enable nuclear weaponization as part of a deal to normalize Iran's relations with the world. And I think Iran will probably negotiate quite hard for that but that's going to be the goal of diplomacy.

But right now, the goal is put this material under the IAEA supervision and control.

COOPER: Norman, I really appreciate your expertise on this. It's so important. Thank you very much.

Coming up next, the latest on tomorrow's intelligence briefing for lawmakers with the administration now limiting what information is letting Congress see. We'll find out more details ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[20:22:30]

COOPER: With the President back from the NATO Summit and his CIA director tonight saying that several key Iranian facilities, "were destroyed," lawmakers are about to get the administration's take with briefings tomorrow for the Senate and one on Friday for House members. And again, on the Democratic side, it will be met by some skepticism. Congressman Jim Himes, the House top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, told CNN's Manu Raju. The administration is, "not interested in the facts." He would not comment when asked about that early DIA assessment

suggesting U.S. strikes did not fully destroy their targets. However, he did say the action was telegraphed in his words many days in advance.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. JIM HIMES (D-CT): The Iranians are not stupid. You know, there's commercially available imagery showing trucks backing up to some of these facilities. So, you know, Americans can form their own conclusion based on what's out there.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: For more on what's ahead starting tomorrow, were joined now by CNN's Kristen Holmes.

Kristen, you have been following the new reporting about the White House is willing to share with Congress. What have you learned?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, not much. We are told, Anderson, that the White House is going to limit what it shares with Capitol Hill, with Congress because of that CNN report on this preliminary intelligence assessment that showed that the strikes on Iran might not have totally decimated those nuclear sites.

So, when I spoke to a White House official told me that the belief among the administration and the White House is that this leak came from Congress. They believe that they -- the DIA, posted this assessment to a system that they call Cap-Net, which is how the administration shares classified information with Congress and that somebody within 24 hours leaked that information to CNN and eventually other outlets.

So, because of that, they want to limit what they're actually giving Congress. So, we'll see what that looks like in the form of a briefing tomorrow. We know that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the Head of the CIA, John Ratcliffe, they will all be briefing the Senate, as you said. So, we'll see what that looks like.

But also, I'm told that the administration is going to limit what it actually uploads into this Cap-Net system, because they don't want any more leaks.

COOPER: All right, Kristen Holmes, thanks very much. My next guest is a member of Congress, will be in one of those classified briefings Kristen just mentioned. He's also U.S. Marine Corps veteran, sits on the Armed Services Committee. Congressman Seth Moulton joins me now.

Congressman, thanks very much for being here. I understand that you received a private briefing today as a member of the Armed Services Committee. Obviously, I won't ask you to reveal anything that you may have learned in that briefing. I'm wondering your reaction is to this reporting that the Trump administration will limit sharing classified information with Congress going forward after this leak. And more importantly, the bigger picture here on how they are handling the dissemination of information about this strike that went on.

[20:25:25]

REP. SETH MOULTON (D-MA): Well, let's be clear about two things, the first is that limiting the classified information you share with Congress is violating the Constitution. We have a constitutional duty and responsibility to provide oversight of the executive and that's what gives us access to classified information.

But I also want to be clear that if anyone did share this classified information, willfully and recklessly -- they should be prosecuted and anyone who shares classified information willfully and recklessly should be prosecuted. Starting, by the way, with the Secretary of Defense, because I get classified briefings almost every single day I'm in Washington, Anderson, and I don't text the details to my friends and family as the Secretary has done and has been proven.

So, if accountability starts at the top, then the first American who should be prosecuted for sharing classified information is in fact Secretary Pete Hegseth himself.

COOPER: What are the National Security implications of limiting that kind of information to you and your colleagues? I mean, because someone listening to this might say, well, look, this thing was put on the C-Net. I don't know who leaked this information. I'm not privy to that. But, you know, if it was seen by -- if it was leaked by somebody in Congress, why then disseminate to Congress at all? That's what -- a hypothetical.

MOULTON: Well, first of all, most leaks that have happened in the past six months have come from the administration. I mean, there have been a lot of leaks of classified information from the Secretary and his staff themselves. And to be clear, the Pentagon had access to this report for a period of time before it was shared with Congress. So, we don't know who leaked the classified information, but what the President clearly wants to do is maintain control over the information so that he can politicize his actions, regardless of what the actual facts on the ground are.

And, that's dangerous for our troops, that's dangerous for our National Security. It's dangerous for Israel's National Security, because if it is true that this DIA report, as its been leaked, is accurate and the President, when he says that these sites have been obliterated, is not actually telling the truth. If that is the case, then he is putting our National Security and Israel's at risk by minimizing the state or the extent -- to minimizing the current status of Iran's nuclear program, which we all acknowledge is a threat to us and to our allies.

COOPER: The President is -- and the Secretary of Defense and those around the President are intentionally conflating, questioning or just asking questions about the effectiveness of the strikes with criticizing the pilots and crew members and everybody else who carried out the mission. He announced the Secretary of Defense going to hold a briefing tomorrow to, "fight for the dignity of our great American pilots." You served. Is anybody questioning in your mind, is anybody

questioning the dignity of the pilots who conducted this mission? Because I've heard none of that in any of the reporting by any network or newspaper about this?

No, this is completely absurd. I mean, I've been on plenty of unsuccessful missions in Iraq. You might say that just about every mission the Vietnam war was unsuccessful, given the results of that war, does that mean there weren't American heroes who did those missions selflessly, and oftentimes, at the risk of their own lives or losing their lives?

No, I mean, Donald Trump has no understanding of what it means to serve on the ground in the military. And, you know, I mean, I think what's going on here is that this is the most military action Donald Trump has ever seen in his life. And so he's excited about it, and he wants to have -- declare victory. But as someone who has served on the ground, I'll tell you, we rely on intelligence. We only go and we want to go into operations having solid intelligence.

And the only thing worse than having bad intelligence is having commanders above you who lie about the intelligence that you have.

COOPER: And I'll just throw in, by the way, you used the term unsuccessful. No one in this reporting at CNN has used the term unsuccessful, we should point out, you know, it was a successful mission, ordnance was dropped exactly where it was supposed to be dropped. Pilots got -- did a remarkable job flying all the way around the world and back without stopping safely. massive damage was done. You can term it whatever you want. The job was done and it was done -- it was executed, it seems to perfection.

The question is, what were the results of it? And that is what the world is waiting to find out.

I mean, it seems to me very simple, it seems to now be some sort of personal thing with the President, and he feels this is about attacking him when its simply about what is accurate, about what happened on ground, everybody needs to and wants to know.

REP. SETH MOULTON, (D-MA): That's right. I mean, I can't understand the mind of the president because I'm not a child psychologist. But the reality here is that it was a brilliantly executed mission. And there have been news reports about how remarkable it is that these pilots could fly all the way around the globe, link up with re- fuelers, link up with fighters, drop these bombs exactly where they were intended. But it is important to be honest about the results because at the end of the day, we all agree that we do not want Iran to have a nuclear weapon.

And the most important piece of this is whether, as the CIA operations officer you just interviewed said, whether this brings the Iranians back to the negotiating table, so that we can get an intrusive inspections regime. So that regardless of whether this destroyed 80 percent or 95 percent or whatever of their nuclear program today, we can ensure through enforceable and intrusive inspections that they do not get a nuclear weapon in the future.

This is not just about today, Anderson. It's about going forward and the only way we ensure that is through a diplomatic agreement.

COOPER: Yeah. Congressman Moulton, appreciate your time. Thank you. Coming up next, more on the bunker buster bombs used in the strike on Iran, how they actually work in a mission they were tailor made for. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[20:35:58]

COOPER: We're continuing to look at the reports about how much damage the U.S. airstrikes did to those three Iranian nuclear sites. Obviously, there is a great contention about exactly what occurred. There's the leaked and early assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency. There's the statements by the president. Tonight's statement from CIA Director Ratcliffe. Some of them appear to be at odds. What is not in dispute, however, is the role played by a unique part of the American arsenal, the 30,000-pound bunker buster bomb which are designed to penetrate deep underground before exploding. Whatever else they did, once they landed, they certainly seemed to have hit their targets precisely.

My next guest and his team released their own report on the damage caused by Iran's nuclear -- to Iran's nuclear facilities and say, despite the strikes being effective, the job may not be completely done. Joining me now is David Albright, former U.N. Weapons Inspector and the President and Founder of the Institute for Science and International Security. And joining me also is retired Air Force General, Philip Breedlove, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander of Europe.

General, let me start off with you. General Breedlove, you say that it's too soon to have an accurate battle damage assessment. But given what we know about these bunker busters, how much damage do you think they likely managed to inflict? And just overall, what do you make of this strike and also now the controversy that is swirling around it?

GEN. PHILIP BREEDLOVE (RET.), U.S. AIR FORCE: Well, first of all, thanks for having me on and it is a pleasure to follow my good friend Norm Rue (ph). We worked together around the world. He's a real expert in this business and he shares (inaudible).

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: He is a star. He is incredible.

BREEDLOVE: Yeah, he does that. So, there are some facts here. We have the very best planners, weaponeers, targeteers that put together a plan for how to use this great weapon, the MOP. And we know that that plan was delivered to pilots who pulled this off in an amazing way. And it's more than the pilots, it's the joint team, the naval fires, the suppression fires, the things that the F-35s and F-22s did on their way. And the orchestration of a large package like this is a really big deal. And it went off magnificently.

And from all the indications and the debriefs, the pilots and the aircraft and the weapons nailed it. They did it perfectly. So, we should have, as kind of Norm (ph) said, an expectation that there was a significant damage to this site. I think what you're hearing in the Intel is that there's a lot of very early judgments as to how this worked. And those judgments are going to get refined and made better over time.

I fully expect them to tell us that we set this program a long ways back, but battle damage assessment is something that takes a little bit of time and applying a lot of very technical and human sources to get to the right understanding.

COOPER: David, what more did your team find out about the damage done to Iran's nuclear facilities when you looked at the images you have?

DAVID ALBRIGHT, PRESIDENT AND FOUNDER, INSTITUTE FOR SCIENCE AND INTERNATIONAL SECURITY: You could see that the key nodes of a centrifuge program were hit. There were three sites that make the centrifuges. And those were -- had actually been declared to the International Atomic Energy Agency. And so, there's a confidence there weren't others. And so, all three were destroyed. There's a critical facility to make the feed gas, it's kind of like the gasoline that would go into a centrifuge or a car, the centrifuge would take this uranium hexafluoride and then spin it in and turn it into enriched uranium.

[20:40:00]

And that site was heavily damaged by the United States. And so, what you have is Iran can't make centrifuges and it can't produce, in a sense, the equivalent of the gas that would go into a car. So, the program is severely damaged. Now, we also found that it's pretty credible that the damage it had done at the Natanz underground site could have destroyed quite a few centrifuges. There's about 15,000 there. It's the workhorse of the centrifuge program.

On Fordow, we have to wait. I mean, what we were able to do was geolocate where the bunker busters dropped with the internal structure. We have the plans for that facility from other work we do. And so, you could see that they targeted a ventilation system that would provide an easier pathway to the bottom. And they targeted a facility that had -- we had noticed when we assessed the construction of ventilation system many years ago. And so, it looked like they found two vulnerabilities and that site or that target position was right above one of the ends of the centrifuge cascade hall.

And so, it looked like the plan was to have explosions at two vital parts of the underground structure and that they would be perpendicular. They would go down the hallways perpendicular to each other and cause, if it worked, immense destruction to the facility. It looked like a very, very clever plan actually to exploit the vulnerabilities. But we don't know what happened. I mean, we cannot -- we hear there's reporting out of Israel that maybe they're gaining confidence that it was severely damaged, but their only public statements have been that it's inoperative and that it cannot operate. And Israel has implied that it would enforce that inoperability.

COOPER: General Breedlove, it seems like the U.S. is going to be -- the administration is going to be putting out more information tomorrow, it seems to try to refute the -- this early DIA assessment. How long, just in your experience, does it -- can it take to get battlefield or bombing damage assessments, like the complete picture? Because it seems to me there's so many moving parts here. There's not just the satellite imagery. There may be human intelligence. There may be signals intelligence and stuff. I don't even know about that. That all would go into the making of the complete picture.

BREEDLOVE: Well, I think it was just described that the expectation, as I said before, and the first look at these facilities, it looks like we did severe damage to these facilities. Measuring that will get better over time. There's a lot of very technical capabilities that some we can't talk about here, that we're going to be looking at this facility for a while. And as has been said, maybe the president and the teams force them to allow inspectors on site, if they can get in there, if there is no radiation evident in these areas.

And so, I don't think that, you used the word refute, I think we're just going to continue to refine what we know about the damage here and I expect that it's going to turn out well for us in the end game.

COOPER: Yeah. General Breedlove, I appreciate your expertise, David Albright as well. Thank you. Coming up next, we have perspective on all we've learned tonight and may learn tomorrow from former Republican Congressman and Air Force veteran Adam Kinzinger and Gretchen Carlson. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[20:48:05]

COOPER: Well, it seems like the president is conflating questions about what damage was done to Iran's nuclear program and the need to find out exactly what the level of damage was somehow with disrespect for the people who carried out the strikes on those nuclear facilities. And there's certainly a dose of politics in that. With that in mind, we're joined now by CNN Political Commentator Adam Kinzinger, a former Republican Congressman who himself served as a pilot in the U.S. Air Force and Air National Guard, and Gretchen Carlson, a journalist and Co-Founder of Lift Our Voices.

Congressman Kinzinger, I've been traveling with and reporting on U.S. forces in combat zone since Somalia in 1992 and '93. And it's -- I really resent it when a politician uses this idea of, if you are reporting on what happened in a battle, that is somehow an attempt to demean troops or the effort they put in and the sacrifice they made. I want to play part of what President Trump said earlier when asked about this leaked DIA assessment.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: And you know, you should be proud, you -- especially, you should be proud of those pilots and you shouldn't be trying to demean them.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Nope. There's --

TRUMP: Those pilots flew at great risk, big chance that they'd never come back home and see their husbands or their wives.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: As a former Air Force pilot, I'm wondering what your reaction is to all of this.

ADAM KINZINGER, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: It's ludicrous. I mean it's absolutely -- that's a man with an ego that gets wounded very easily, that's trying to make a straw man. He declared victory before we had intelligence assessments. And the worst part is he forced a ceasefire between the parties so that the B-2s couldn't go back for round two, for instance, if they needed to. Nobody guaranteed that it would just take one round of strikes to take these out.

[20:50:00]

And now, instead of admitting that or even just putting out there like, yeah, maybe it's not as damaged as we want, or just wait and see because we don't know. He's instead using the military as a way to say, like, you can't question me because then you're questioning the military. Nobody's questioning the military. They carried out their mission perfectly. They did what they were asked to do.

The political decision that maybe you have to go back for a second strike was on Donald Trump, and he failed at that. And so do not use the military on that. As you know, Anderson, they executed this flawlessly and perfectly. They were failed by politicians if in fact, this wasn't destroyed.

COOPER: Gretchen, what do you -- how do you see this?

GRETCHEN CARLSON, JOURNALIST: Well, I think the moral of the story here is that when you use a word like obliterated, you can't freak out when reporters decide to try and fact check that. I mean, there's no nuance in obliterated. That means dead, gone, decimated. And so, from a PR perspective, it would've been much better if the president would have said that this was a successful mission. That thanks to the bravery of the members of our military, they carried out a significant operation.

I mean, all of those things are still incredibly positive, but you would wait until you had the final determination. But that is not the way Trump works. I mean, quintessential Trump is to say something that's incredibly out there, right? And then attack people who don't automatically agree with him.

COOPER: I mean, if in Iraq, Congressman Kinzinger, when -- mission accomplished, when that banner was put up, if everybody had said, OK -- if every reporter said, OK, mission accomplished, it's over. And I mean, that's not the job. And if this isn't about the -- to me, I don't understand, this isn't about the person or the president. This isn't a personal thing at all. It's important for everybody, for the entire world, for this entire region, for people in Israel to know what the nuclear capabilities remaining that Iran may have. Or is there plutonium somewhere?

What exactly has been destroyed? To your point, do more strikes need to be made? This seems like a vitally important national security, global security issue. And it seems like it's arguing over his use of the word obliterated, which is not even a technical term. It's stunning to me that we're in this position that this is the conversation.

KINZINGER: Yeah. I mean, well, you and I are kind of normal people and most of America and the world is kind of normal people that see things and don't believe that they are the center of the universe. But when you're somebody that believes literally everything that happens has to reflect on you, I mean, frankly quite narcissistic, then yeah, I mean, this is a personal affront.

So, look, the B-2's successful strike with what they did. We need to see what the results are. Israel says one thing, our Intel says another. It takes time to find this out. That's what a grownup president would say, is like, look, we did what we thought we needed to do. Maybe we needed to go back. I don't know. You wouldn't stand there and say, boy, you're going after the military. Nobody's doing that.

And there's not a single person in the United States military that feels that CNN by asking the question that we all have is somehow denigrating their service. It's silly. And the only person that thinks he's tricking somebody is Donald Trump. He thinks he's pulling the wool over us, and he is not. It's obviously clear.

COOPER: Yeah. Gretchen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs on Sunday, standing next to the Defense Secretary Hegseth said, essentially, it's too early to know, bold mission, great job, but too early to know, we're assessing things. That's the headline.

CARLSON: Yeah. He may be in trouble for actually saying that now. I mean, look, today, I actually thought that I was seeing some reality because, as you saw at the press conference, when the president was still in the Netherlands, he actually admitted that that first report that came out, that it was moderate to severe damage. And look, it may turn out that it was all severe, but he at least was admitting that it was moderate. But then he doubled down again on the fact that it was severe.

COOPER: Yeah.

CARLSON: And now, you've seen that Tulsi Gabbard has come out now and basically said that everything was obliterated. And now, you see that there's a press conference called tomorrow morning with the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, 8:00 a.m. Eastern. He's obviously going to say exactly what the president wants him to say.

I think the difference here from Trump 1.0 and Trump 2.0 Administration is that you had people who were in these positions, who had experience, and they were willing to call out the president at certain times. Now, you don't have that.

[20:55:00]

And so, I think that for the American public, we have to raise a very serious question about whether or not we can believe everything that's coming out of our national intelligence. And that is a scary reality to me.

COOPER: That's right. Hopefully, we'll learn more tomorrow. Gretchen Carlson, thank you. Adam Kinzinger as well. More from the region ahead. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: CNN's Fred Pleitgen visited a site in Tehran damaged by an airstrike, take a look.

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: -- here, that this building was badly damaged by an airstrike. The Iranians are saying that a bakery was damaged, a beauty salon, and two residential units. They say several people were killed here. They're not saying who the people were who were killed. But they also say that one person is still in hospital and many people were also injured here as well.

You can tell the blast must have been pretty powerful. We're actually in the building next door now, and you can see there's significant damage here as well. In fact, someone's chocolates are still here on this coffee table. And if we go over here into the room next door, this seems to be some --